You need to conduct a review (consisting of articles from academic journals and news/media/industry reports) on a contemporary topic in supply chain management. This assignment is designed to foster students' understanding of contemporary supply chain concepts. This is achieved by asking students to conduct a thematic analysis on a supply chain management topic from the academic and news/media/industry literature. Emphasis is placed on identifying unique and related themes surrounding the allocated topic based on the articles and reports reviewed.

Reviewing academic articles will allow students to gain skills in reading and comprehending research, and also familiarize them with the structure of a scientific paper. Reviewing industrial reports and/or news articles will give students a general understanding of the industry in the area of supply chain management. This will also help them become familiar with the existing careers and contexts for a supply chain expert.

Students are required to review at least10academic articles and5news/media/industry reports in an area of supply chain management to identify the major themes. The identified themes must be analyzed and presented as a report of around 2000 words along with a Thematic Analysis Table only of academic articles (sample shown in Table 1). The word count excludes tables, figures, and list of references used.

Table 1: A sample thematic analysis table

Number	Author	Year	Journal name	Contribution	Method	Findings	Context (industry/ Country)	Limitation
1
2
...
10

Example of supply chain topics

1. Supply chain excellence
2. Closed and open-loop supply chain
3. Supply chain procurement
4. Buyer-supplier relationships
5. Supply chain risk management
6. Product returns management
7. Supply chain integration
8. Supply chain collaboration
9. Big data analytics in supply chain
10. Supply chain uncertainty
11. Third party logistics management
12. Outsourcing
13. Sustainable supply chain management
14. Internet of things (IoT)
15. Industry 4.0
16. Supply chain network design
17. Inventory planning in supply chain
18. Transportation management in supply chain
19. Distribution planning in supply chain
20. Emergent technologies in supply chain

The project report should consist of the following sections:

1. Introduction
2. Review from academic articles and news/media/industry reports
3. Findings of the study
4. Discussion and Conclusion
5. References
6. Introduction

The introduction includes the background and rationale of the research. You should also explain the selected supply chain topic and why this topic is important in supply chain management. What are you going to do in this research report? How is this paper organised? You should cite a few papers here.

1. Review from academic articles and industry reports

Here you should identify the most relevant papers (at least 10+5) from the literature for your topic. You should develop a story for the topic to understand the progress of the topic. You also explain the contribution and limitations of those studies. You should present the Thematic Analysis Table, which will reflect the summary of contributions and findings of previous studies within the topic. You should explain the Thematic Analysis Table.

1. Findings of the study

You should analyses the papers quantitatively here. You can analyse the papers again with some other parameters (such as journal name, author name, publish year, methodology, context and so on). You should use some graphs and a table to describe your findings. You should explain the insight of your analysis.

You should also summaries the contribution and research gaps of previous studies. Based on those research gaps, you should suggest a future research direction. The future research direction should be feasible and reflect the research gaps of previous studies.

1. Discussion and Conclusion

You need to discuss your findings and explain how they can be helpful for both research and practice. You need to discuss managerial insight for practical implications - how can supply chain decision makers can benefit from this research? You should also discuss whether there are any limitations to the study.

1. References

The project is directed at the collection and analysis of information - if you use material from another source, then references that properly. You should cite at least 10 references from academic journals and 5 news/media/industry articles in your assignment. The reference and citation style should be uniform across the report, and you must follow Harvard reference style for UTS. A video link for referencing style (Harvard reference style) for UTS Business School is available athttps://youtu.be/9hyI1iw-YQwLinks to an external site.